The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [99]
"You suppose they're the ones who debrief her?"
"No, that's a job for the guys over at Thames House. Must get old after a while. Pity they don't send us all the transcripts, though," he added with a chuckle. "Might be good for getting the blood flowing in the morning."
"Thanks, I can always buy a Hustler at the magazine store if I feel scuzzy some night."
"It's not a clean business we're in, Jack. The kind of people we look at, they aren't the kind you invite over for dinner."
"Hey, White House, remember? Half the people we hosted for a State Dinner-Dad could hardly shake hands with them. But Secretary Adler told him it was business, and so Dad had to be nice to the sunzabitches. Politics attracts some really scummy people, too."
"Amen. So, anything else new on Sali?"
"I haven't gone over yesterday's money moves yet. Hey, if Cunningham stumbles over anything significant, what happens next?"
"That's up to Gerry and the senior staff. " You're way too junior to get your panties in a wad about that, he didn't add, though the young Ryan got the message anyway.
"Well, Dave?" Gerry Hendley was asking upstairs.
"He's laundering money and sending some of it off to persons unknown. Liechtenstein bank. If I had to guess, it's to cover credit card accounts. You can get a Visa or MasterCard through that particular bank, and so it could well be to cover credit card accounts for persons unknown. Could be a mistress or a close friend, or somebody in whom we might have direct interest."
"Any way to find out?" Tom Davis asked.
"They use the same accounting program most banks do," Cunningham answered, meaning that with a little patience, The Campus could crack their way inside and learn more. There were firewalls in the way, of course. It was a job better left to the National Security Agency, and so the trick was to get NSA to task one of its computer weenies to do the cracking. That would mean faking a request by CIA to do the job, and that, the accountant figured, was a little harder to accomplish than just typing a note into a computer terminal. He also suspected that The Campus had someone inside both intelligence agencies who could do the faking so that no discernible paper trail would be left behind.
"Is it strictly necessary?"
"Maybe in a week or so, I can find more data. This Sali guy might just be a rich kid playing stickball out in the traffic, but but my nose tells me he's a player of some sort," Cunningham admitted. He'd developed good instincts over the years, as a result of which two former Mafia kingpins were now living in solitary cells at Marion, Illinois. But he didn't trust his own instincts as well as his former and current superiors did. A career accountant with a foxhound's nose, he was also very conservative in talking about it.
"A week, you think?"
Dave nodded. "About that."
"How's the Ryan kid?"
"Good instincts. He found something most people would have missed. Maybe his youth works for him. Young target, young bloodhound. Usually, it doesn't work. This time looks like maybe it did. You know, when his dad appointed Pat Martin to be Attorney General, I heard some things about Big Jack. Pat really liked him, and I worked with Mr. Martin enough to respect him a lot. This kid may be going places. It'll take about ten years to be sure of that, of course."
"We're not supposed to believe in breeding over here, Dave," Tom Davis observed.
"Numbers is numbers, Mr. Davis. Some people have a good nose, some don't. He doesn't yet, not really, but he's sure heading that way." Cunningham had helped start the justice Department's Special Accounting Unit, which specialized in tracking terrorist money. Everyone needed money to operate, and money always left a trail somewhere, but it was often found after the